


a good woman is hard to find

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Families of Choice, Roommates, Single Parents, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Unconventional Families, bonding over your common ex having dumped you in very not friendly ways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 02:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10548148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: “Shouldn’thebe around?” Elia asks, and Lyanna doesn’t know if she’s glad that she didn’t beat around the bush or if she wants to disappear into the ground.“Er, he hasn’t been since the seventh month. Family matters. You know.”Elia sends her a fairly understanding look, which Lyanna had not expected.“I think I do,” Elia sighs. Her second kid, the one in the cart, makes some kind of displeased noise and the other one calls for her mother from where she’s standing at the sweets aisle. “Listen,” Elia says, “guess we haven’t got time now, but maybe - if you ever want to get coffee sometime and trash talk our common ex, your brother has Arthur Dayne’s number and he has my brother’s.”Then she runs after her daughter and Lyanna is left standing grabbing at her cart and wondering if she’s ended up in some kind of alternate universe.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of a thing I've written a while ago on tumblr for the prompt _Lyanna and Elia raise their three children together because Rhaegar has disappeared and he shows up again during a Stark/Martell family reunion to find both his ex-lovers are together_. This is not my usual sandbox but I had fun with it admittedly xD the title is from Bruce Springsteen (sort of, it was originally a good man is hard to find but xD) and absolutely nothing belongs to me except the plot, sort of.

It’s probably very cliché that it starts when they literally crash into each other at the supermarket.

Or better: Elia’s cart crashes against Lyanna’s while she’s distracted because her eldest daughter is running off towards the sweets counter, and Lyanna is just glad she had her own kid on her back and not in the front.

“Sorry,” Elia tells her, “you know how it is with -” she says, and then she never finishes the sentence.

Lyanna imagines why - finding yourself in front of the woman your ex-husband had a fling with, who caused your split and who also has a kid from that same ex who has also conveniently vanished into thin air before he was born is probably not what Elia had in mind for today.

“Er,” Lyanna says, “no problem. I know.”

Elia _looks_  at her, taking in the situation - Lyanna has a feeling she didn’t even know Rhaegar had disappeared also when _she_  is concerned. She’s wearing some of _Ned’s_ old clothes that he gave her when she said she needed something that no one would miss when her kid started teething, she hasn’t had a shower in two days and the only blessing is that Jon isn’t awake for this. Elia, on her side, looks tired but at least - well, put together. Sort of.

“Shouldn’t _he_  be around?” Elia asks, and Lyanna doesn’t know if she’s glad that she didn’t beat around the bush or if she wants to disappear into the ground.

“Er, he hasn’t been since the seventh month. _Family_  matters. You know.”

Elia sends her a fairly understanding look, which Lyanna had not expected.

“I think I do,” Elia sighs. Her second kid, the one in the cart, makes some kind of displeased noise and the other one calls for her mother from where she’s standing at the sweets aisle. “Listen,” Elia says, “guess we haven’t got time now, but maybe - if you ever want to get coffee sometime and trash talk our common ex, your brother has Arthur Dayne’s number and he has my brother’s.”

Then she runs after her daughter and Lyanna is left standing grabbing at her cart and wondering if she’s ended up in some kind of alternate universe.

–

They see each other for coffee.

Turns out that when Elia finds out how things actually went, she shakes her head and says, _see what happens when you don’t even try to see the other side_.

“Sorry that he dumped you like that,” she says.

“I get by. I mean, my brothers do help out.”

“I know, but - it’s still not okay. Well, if you ever want to make the kids hang out, I won’t say no.”

It’s obvious that she means it. Lyanna wants to cry in relief - damn it, she hadn’t even known Rhaegar was _married_  when they met each other.

She calls Elia another time.

And then again.

–

Once, they bring the kids to the park all at once even if they don’t tell them _how_  exactly they’re all related.

“Well,” Lyanna says after half an hour, “given that the only kid in existence who’s ever managed to _not_  make mine cry is his cousin, maybe we should tell them at some point.”

Elia sips from her frappuccino and takes a deep breath - her bright orange scarf stands out against her black coat and the snow surrounding them. Their kids are making a snowman together, more or less. Or better, Rhaenys is doing most of the work, but never mind that.

“Really?” She asks.

Lyanna shrugs. “The daycare girls keep on saying that he’s terribly sweet on his own and they’re glad he basically never cries but that whenever he’s dealing with other children it’s a disaster. Robb’s basically the only one he likes. Until now.”

“Well,” Elia replies, “I don’t see why not. I mean, fuck’s sake, it’s not as if we have to make _their_  life miserable because Rhaegar was a complete idiot.”

Lyanna has nothing to add to that.

They tell them (well, Aegon and Rhaenys - Jon is _one_ , it’s not as if he’s going to remember that conversation). It goes _definitely_  better than they had imagined. They end up making sure they hang out more often.

After all, it’s really not worth it to poison their lives over their father being a complete idiot.

–

“My landlord _so_  wants me gone,” Lyanna tells Elia a year later while they’re having tea at her studio apartment. The kids are out with Ned, bless him and Cat for volunteering to take _all_  of them for the day.

“Really?”

“I can only take so many hints that he doesn’t want single mothers in his establishment. As if I don’t pay rent on time.”

Elia’s dark eyes turn on hers, and she seems to be thinking it through. Then she glances at the three pictures attached to the fridge. One is Jon and Robb, another was taken at the park when Jon and his half-siblings were sortofbuilding that snowman, the other is some artsy black and white picture Cat took of her and Jon the week when she brought him home. No one should be allowed to look _artsy_  when they’re basically passed out with their kid sleeping _on them_ on Ned’s horrible old yellow sofa, but somehow it came out good and she put it there for - she doesn’t know why. Maybe to remind herself that, from the outside, the result of falling for a guy who doesn’t tell you he’s married, then leaves his wife to _be with you_  when you end up pregnant and then disappears off the face of the earth because his family doesn’t approve can… well, look somehow better than it feels sometimes. Not that she’d change things now, but - sometimes she just wishes she had been smarter about it. As if it’s of any use crying over that now.

“I have an entire floor I don’t use,” Elia says then.

“Sorry?”

“You’ve _seen_  the family house. I have _two_  floors, Oberyn has the other two. Half of my half is empty and I don’t even know what to do with it, and I don’t need money on top of what I earn already. Just move in, I could use the company sometimes.”

“ _What_? Are you sure?”

Elia gives her a half-smile that’s somehow both encouraging and somehow melancholic and shrugs slightly. “Why not? Sometimes it’s just - it’d be nice to have another adult around. Oberyn’s not in town most of the time anyway and I love my children, I do, but being alone with _two_  of them just makes you long for _any_  grown up to be around the place regularly. Really, I don’t mind.”

Lyanna wants to refuse, then she remembers how much she’d save from the rent money. Here she’s sharing _one_  room with Jon and at _some_  point it’s not going to work anymore - maybe until he’s five she can push it, but if she wants to raise a kid with some sense of independence and privacy she’d rather change the situation _before_  then. And she likes Elia, to be truthful, she likes her a _lot_ , and if Jon’s less than stellar social skills keep on developing this way then it’d be better if he’s around his siblings.

Well then.

“Fine, but I’m - okay, I’m a shit cook. I can do the laundry or whatever else.”

“Deal. I hate doing laundry,” Elia agrees, and holds out a hand. Lyanna shakes it.

–

Thing is: Lyanna’s never _actually_  considered dating a woman - mostly because Rhaegar was the first man she _really_  dated and it ended the way it did, and when you’re having a kid at nineteen it’s not like you have time for _dating_. And in high school all her flings were men. But she’s always sort of known she wouldn’t have problems with the prospect of dating a woman. In theory.

Living with one who has some ten years on her and is _fucking scorching hot_  as pretty much the rest of her family hasn’t made it easy for exactly that same reason. On one side she’s happy the Martells were _not_  the kind of stuck up rich people the Targaryens are and they had no issues with _her_  coming to live with Elia.

(Hell, after Oberyn once clapped her on the back so hard she spit her wine because she didn’t even try to look for Rhaegar so he could at least acknowledge the baby as his own, and said that she did the right thing not even worrying a bit about that asshole of a Targaryen, she stopped worrying about whether they hated her or not.)

That said, Lyanna had been sure she had kept it under control - sometimes she’ll stare and fine, she _likes_  Elia and Elia’s not just hot, she’s _beautiful_  with that dark skin, long raven hair and eyes of that same shade, and sometimes Lyanna envies those long eyelashes of hers and then decides that no, they look great on _her_ , no point in envy when Lyanna’s hardly ever given a fuck about her own looks.

Anyway, she doesn’t know if maybe she wasn’t as good as she thought or _what_ , but when one day when the kids are at Doran Martell’s and she comes back from tidying up Jon’s room and finds Elia reading in the living room and Elia tells her that they need to _talk_ , Lyanna can’t help thinking, _crap, did she figure me out_?

Turns out, Elia had.

Turns out, _talking_  meant actually making out in the middle of the living room with the two of them crashing on the ground when Elia put her foot over some Lego toy of Aegon’s and put her off balance. Then it turns into making out on the couch, which is blissfully free of Legos of any kind, and Lyanna decides that maybe this situation turned out better like this than if Rhaegar hadn’t fucked off wherever he did.

His loss, really.

–

The last thing Rhaegar expected from Elia was an invitation to the annual _Stark-Martell post-Christmas family reunion_. Not that he had expected anything from her after he came back to London four years after leaving abruptly, and he wouldn’t even have known how to apologize, but she sent him a message on Facebook after finding out from common friends and - well, he had gone. If anything, to apologize.

But when he gets there, he realizes that maybe there’s something else he had expected even less. Walking in on Elia and Lyanna sharing the same plate of appetizer while sitting on the sofa in a way that’s certainly not _friendly_  was jarring enough, but seeing the two of them kiss a moment later like two people who’ve been in a relationship for at least a few years -

Yeah. Wasn’t in the plans. He doesn’t come forward as he sees them part and hold hands as they go back to their appetizers, and at that point he can’t even be angry because _he_  was the one listening to his damned father and leaving the country out of some ridiculous concept of _keeping the family integrity_  - shit, he should have just cut ties with the old mad bastard long before then. It’s probably not surprising they moved on with their life, and they _would_  have ended up meeting, given that they gave birth to three children one of which he hasn’t ever met, who as far as he knows are in the room which Doran reserved for them and the relatives who volunteered to be on watching-children-duty. He should go there, at some point, when he finds some way to put into words how much of an idiot he was. 

(Especially with _Lyanna’_ s child - how is he even going to _not_  sound like an asshole when the point of the matter is ‘I had a fling with your mother because I fell for her and I left your siblings’ mother for her but then I left her too because I was a complete fucking bastard’?)

There’s one thing, he knows for sure now, though.

That when it comes to Elia and Lyanna and anything else related to the two of them, whatever it is that’s going on between them or his part in their lives, he’s most probably too late for anything that’s not making amends, and he hopes they’ll let him do that, at least. They deserve some, and they probably deserve each other more than _he_  deserved them in the first place.

 

End.


End file.
